The microblogging service of Twitter does not comply with the requirements of Russian legislation, including those aimed at countering extremism, according to the Head of the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications Aleksandr Zharov.
The factual refusal to block “popular opponents of the Russian government” was misunderstood by supervisory agency, as TASS reported on Tuesday, February 10. “The factual refusal to grant the requests for blocking of popular opponents of the Russian government and other requirements on restriction of freedom of speech in relation to mass non-violent performances in Ukraine cannot also be understood” - TASS quoted the Head of Roskomnadzor. The supervisory authority has a question to the statistics given in the official report of the social network.
The comment to the report by Twitter notes that several requests for blocking from Russia were rejected. The Head of Roskomnazdor said that such position of the company expresses its consistent non-compliance with the requirements of the Russian legislation, including those aimed at countering extremism.
“Roskomnadzor has a question on the acceptability of such a position of a company operating on the territory of the Russian Federation” – Zharov noted. He also said that in 2014 Twitter granted nearly three thousand US requests for disclosure of personal information of users, and none of 108 Russian requests for disclosure of data on attendance of accounts were granted. At the end of December 2014 the sources of the “Dozhd” Channel reported that the social networks Facebook and Twitter decided not to block the pages of the supporters of Aleksei Navalny and prepared to complete blocking on the territory of Russia.
This happened after the former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and editorial boards of some influential American publications had condemned Facebook for blocking of the page where the supporters of a politician planned a street action in his support. In particular, a source in Twitter said that the social network would mail its users sending requests from Roskomnadzor to delete information, but no sanctions would be applied to those who would not obey. Neither Facebook nor Twitter made any official statements on the matter.
Author: Anna Dorozhkina